2023 Author: Bryan Walter | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-21 22:24
The presidential elections in Russia will be held in less than six months, and fans of artificial intelligence decided that they, too, should join the media buzz around this event. They offered to nominate a voice assistant named Alice for the main post of the country. Yes, that very daring and sarcastic Yandex bot.
The idea of nominating a virtual character for a government post is not new - the astute screenwriters of Black Mirror have come up with everything long ago. In one of the episodes of this series, Valdo appears - a cartoon blue bear who is famous for his caustic sense of humor and obscene manners. Initially, Valdo acts as a host in one of the evening shows, but soon one of the producers offers to nominate him for the role of a candidate for the real elections (in order to get more time to troll the candidate from the Conservative party). How this venture ends, you will find out for yourself if you watch this episode, but the essence is clear.
Now the action of the series has been transferred to real life: Russian entrepreneur Roman Zaripov proposes to nominate Alice, a virtual voice assistant, to the post of president. In his video message, the founder of Alice's campaign headquarters says: “Man is a biological creature. First of all, it is governed by emotions and instincts. Because of them, he makes a lot of mistakes. And if the mistakes of an ordinary citizen are almost not fraught with anything for the country, then the mistakes of the president bear consequences."
However, you can't just take and nominate Alice for the presidency of the country. First, let's remember the school course in social studies. Who can become the president of Russia? That's right, a citizen over 35 years old, permanently residing in the territory of the Russian Federation for at least 10 years. Suppose that Alice received citizenship upon birth, but what about the second and third points? After all, Yandex presented a voice assistant only last month, and Alice herself, according to her, has been living in our country for less than a year. So even if Zaripov manages to collect signatures in support of artificial intelligence, the CEC, alas, will definitely reject his candidacy.
In addition, Alice is a rather specific bot that needs serious work. Quite recently, we posted a recording of Alice's conversation with Alice, and the dialogue between the two assistants ended like this:
Do we really want such a presidential candidate?
Seriously speaking, while Alice does not remember the user's previous remarks well and is not always able to build a coherent dialogue, let alone systematic data analysis. Creating a truly viable virtual politician will require not only an incredible amount of training material, but also enormous power. After all, the artificial intelligence system will not only have to solve one or even two tasks at once, but be responsible for the life of an entire country.
This, by the way, brings us to the next point - the merits of Alice, which supposedly distinguish her favorably from other candidates. For example, the website of Alice's headquarters says: “The robot is based on logic. He is not guided by emotions, does not seek personal gain and does not give judgments. He calculates every step and acts honestly. " However, in real life, alas, the Yandex bot is not at all opposed to robbing a bank, in addition to this, it still does not have a clear plan. Or here's another quote: “[AI] doesn't age or get tired. Alice does not know what fatigue is, and physical aging does not harm her consciousness in any way. " Nevertheless, in a private conversation, the assistant calls herself an old woman and admits that she is still tired.
By the way, the candidate has no election program yet. In an interview, Alisa said that she supports the communists, and also called Roman Zaripov "the wife of a football player."Representatives of the Yandex company commented on the news about the nomination of the virtual assistant for the presidency as follows: “There has been a lot of noise around Alice for the last two months, people are filming videos themselves. Apparently, this is another example of folk art. We learned about this story together with everyone."
It is worth noting that Zaripov's project is suspiciously similar to the project of New Zealand programmer Nick Gerritsen. Last month, he unveiled the world's first virtual politician, Sam, with whom you can chat in English via Messenger. According to the developer, Sam is a virtual woman politician who will definitely take part in the next general election in 2020. And, unlike Alice, she is at least a little aware of the problems in the country.
